With Times op-edster John Tierney's surprise announcement Tuesday that he'd be departing what is generally considered the most valuable real estate in American journalism — or at least used to be considered that, in the pre-Internet, pre-TimesSelect era — we were struck, as many no doubt were, by the brevity of his term. Tierney, who joined the page last year, replacing William Safire, was undoubtedly the shortest-serving current columnist. But, we wondered, was he perhaps the shortest-serving op-ed columnist ever? After some quality time with Nexis and the Times archive, we can now report that, yes, he was. After the jump, what we think is a complete list of all Times op-ed tenures since the page's inception in 1970.
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